Fisker Karma: The Fisker Karma had a rough year in 2012 after two of the luxury cars, including one in the Houston area, caught fire and burned to the ground. The automaker also had to suspend operations after running out of batteries.

Photo: Paul Sancya

Fisker Karma: The Fisker Karma had a rough year in 2012 after two...

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Jonathan Alcorn : Bloomberg LUXURY: A Fisker Karma makes an appearance at the Alternative Transportation Expo and Conference Conference in Santa Monica, Calif., this week. The Fisker Karma is a gasoline- and battery-powered hybrid.

Photo: Jonathan Alcorn

Jonathan Alcorn : Bloomberg LUXURY: A Fisker Karma makes an...

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Fisker Karma, a plug-in hybrid sports car

Photo: MARTIAL TREZZINI, AP

Fisker Karma, a plug-in hybrid sports car

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The Fisker Karma, a luxury plug-in car, is displayed at the North American International Auto Show on Jan. 15 in Detroit. Fisker Automotive and Visionary Vehicles are among the companies planning to bring luxury plug-in cars to market, proving that green doesn't have to come in an economical package.

Photo: Kiichiro Sato, AP

The Fisker Karma, a luxury plug-in car, is displayed at the North...

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A solar panel is shown on the roof of Fisker Karma, a luxury plug-in car, at the North American International Auto Show on Jan. 15 in Detroit.

Fisker Automotive Inc., the troubled electric-car maker, missed its first payment on a $529 million U.S. Energy Department loan, according to an agency official.

Fisker, based in Anaheim, California, was supposed to make the payment yesterday on about $193 million it had drawn down from the loan. The Energy Department official asked not to be identified because information about the loan isn't public.

The agency recovered $21 million on April 11 from Fisker's "reserve account" that wasn't part of the loan amount, Aoife McCarthy, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said by e-mail. The agency cut off Fisker's access to its loan in June 2011 when the carmaker failed to meet production milestones. On April 5, Fisker dismissed about three-quarters of its 200 workers.

"They're not saying anything today," spokesman Tony Knight of Sitrick & Co., an outside public relations agency representing Fisker, said yesterday in response to inquiries about the loan payment. "The next thing will be Wednesday at the hearing," he said by telephone.

Henrik Fisker, the company's former executive chairman and founder, Tony Posawatz, the chief executive officer, and Bernhard Koehler, the chief operating officer, are scheduled to testify tomorrow at a hearing of a subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Nicholas Whitcombe, supervisory senior investment officer at the Energy Department, is also scheduled to appear before the panel, which has criticized the agency for loans to other companies, including failed California solar-panel maker Solyndra LLC, which entered bankruptcy liquidation in 2011.

Fisker made about 2,500 of its $103,000 plug-in Karmas before halting production last year. The halt disrupted its plans to use its U.S. loan to restart a shuttered Delaware factory owned by the predecessor of General Motors Co. (GM) The Karmas it produced were assembled in Finland.